


Every Breath You Take

by like_lions



Series: The Hargreeves and Their Mommy Issues [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family Dynamics, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Mommy Issues, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Multi, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Pre-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves Bashing, Reunions, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27008353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/like_lions/pseuds/like_lions
Summary: They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but the Hargreeves aren't really ones for proverbs so who the hell knows.Or: The Hargreeves' birth moms, origin stories, surprising similarities, and Reginald Hargreeves is a POS who took advantage of women and girls in bad situations. Why did he only get these seven babies?
Series: The Hargreeves and Their Mommy Issues [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971142
Comments: 14
Kudos: 89





	1. Prologue

It started like any other day (which was almost always a shitshow in the Hargreeves household). A conversation about who put expired milk back into the refrigerator (it was Klaus) turned into a fight about how seven people raised in the same house could have such drastically different ways of living.

They say that in the battle between nature and nurture, nurture almost always wins out. But then you see cases where triplets raised separately hundreds of miles apart like the same shows, play the same sports, and play the freaking trombone, and you start to wonder.

They never had time to ponder the philosophical question: where did I come from?

At least until now.


	2. Bette Davis Eyes (Number One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a playlist for each of the Hargreeves and their mothers that you can find by clicking the link in the song lyrics at the beginning of each chapter. These will come more into play when we get into the team actually traveling through time and meeting them. This is more of a narrative backstory on each individual mom. Let me know if you enjoy, I'm excited to share each of them with you.

_Her hair is Harlow gold_

_Her lips a sweet surprise_

_Her hands are never cold_

[ _She's got Bette Davis eyes_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2TLCSeKYtdUGGif1kieUBw?si=8kaQCj6_St2ouA5xADNwjQ)

**Name:** Lilia Kasich

 **Date of birth:** 1966-04-26 (age 23)

 **Place of birth:** Pripyat, Ukraine

Lilia was born under a full moon. Her baba said this was a sign of good luck, but her didi was convinced it was a bad omen. She had a lot of contradictions like that in her life. But for much of her life she assumed her baba was right - she was among the most beautiful girls in their small community with long blonde hair and big brown eyes. She was talented, always surprising suitors with her quick wit, and she was spirited (something her didi loved about her). Life over the first couple of decades of her life was great…until it wasn’t.

You see, Lilia was born in Pripyat, better known in the West as the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It wasn’t uncommon for citizens to live around these plants in Eastern Europe, and it was a great opportunity for unskilled workers like her family to get well-paying jobs. As long as you didn’t think too hard about the long-term effects of radiation exposure, you’d be content with what you had. The old fashioned Ukrainian way.

But in the battle between good luck and bad omens, Lilia’s didi won out. On her twentieth birthday the reactor overheated and within 36 hours everything and everyone that she knew was gone. They weren’t all dead - at least not yet - but her provincial life in her happy community as she knew it was over. Full moons are the worst.

Lilia and her remaining family fled to Kiev where she tried to keep up a life for herself despite increasing pain in her bones and joints. They didn’t know it at the time, but a lovely long-term side effect of massive radiation exposure was cancer. Every type of cancer like a damn terminal disease candy shop.

But Lilia wasn’t going to let a little radiation poisoning get her down - she had to protect her family and get to work now that most of the men in her family were either dead or hospitalized. No time for self pity - she couldn’t just be the pretty girl from Pripyat anymore, she had to be the responsible and sensible one. And she was good at it, a natural leader and highly efficient at her factory work. She could tough it out with men twice her size and never complained. She was known as such a hard worker that she could have open sores on her fingers and still come to work to pack boxes.

So when she felt unwell on the morning of October 1st, 1989, she chocked it up to some bad porridge and went about her day. And like a true cog in the capitalist machine, she was standing at that same conveyer belt when she suddenly gave birth to a baby boy. She was so caught off guard by the situation that she nearly kept working immediately afterward, functioning on sheer autopilot.

Lilia’s family was, of course, horrified. They might be radiation-exposed refugees, but they were still Eastern Orthodox and sex before marriage was a terrible sin. She was getting up there in age, sure, but having a baby out of wedlock? Ridiculous. Her didi didn’t believe her when she said that she couldn’t have been pregnant, she hadn’t even had sex before. He insisted that they send them off to a convent to be raised in secrecy to avoid “the scandal.”

So when a strange older man with a curly mustache and English accent approached them two days later with a proposition, she was helpless to say no. It was this or leave her family to struggle without her. So on October 3rd, 1989, she kissed her sweet baby Ivan and passed him over to the weird man with the monocle. He promised her that he would be treasured, always his number one boy. Lilia didn’t know what that meant, but she knew that the $10,000 that he gave her in exchange for the boy would be enough to change her family’s life forever.

Lilia Kasich never had another child after ovarian cancer torched her fertility. She often thought of the boy she gave up. She once turned on the television and saw a blonde boy with flaxen hair on the screen, part of the so-called Umbrella Academy. She stroked his face on the television screen and briefly took a moment to herself. Then she got back up and went to the factory - there was more work to be done.


	3. I Hope You Dance (Number Two)

_Don't let some Hellbent heart leave you bitter_

_When you come close to sellin' out, reconsider_

_Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance_

_And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance_

[ _I hope you dance_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jVVvegsw7FzovFO1Vq5ag?si=SzRsiZgTTcG682gWqBxM3A)

**Name:** Bianca Maria Aguirre-Cortes

 **Date of birth:** 1964-03-09 (age 25)

 **Place of birth:** Managua, Nicaragua

Gunshots sound like fireworks, especially when it’s machine gun fire. They don’t normally teach you that unless you’re in law enforcement or the military, but when you grow up in a war zone it’s impossible not to know. It’s deadly not to know. Bianca was proud of her Nicaraguan heritage - she kept a flag in her bedroom as a reminder of the country that she loved. But it’s hard to be proud of your country when there are death squads roaming the streets.

Bianca used to love the United States, too. She would watch American television shows and imagine she was in the family on Growing Pains or that she was a member of the Brady Bunch. The USA seemed so bright and beautiful, full of hope and promise. But then they’d send their contras to your country and they’d execute people ruthlessly on the sidewalks of your small town. They’d laugh as they struck children with the butts of rifles. It wasn’t what she imagined when she watched the Seaver family on television.

Fear is a powerful tool of the oppressor, that’s what her father would tell her. And he was right, it was incredibly powerful. Because when she saw her father get shot by machine gun fire in their front yard, she told herself she would always toe the line. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to her family. And then her fiancé had his house broken into by the contras and was hauled off, never to be seen again, and she knew that no matter what she did she was never going to be safe.

When she felt horrific pains in the early morning of October 1, 1989, she thought for a moment she might be dying, and she almost wished that she was. Anything that would take her away from this place - death had to be better than this. But alas, she wasn’t dying. Quite the opposite actually. When she saw her newborn baby boy she cried. Not out of pain, but out of fear. He looked just like her father and when she looked into his face she saw a horrible future awaiting him. She held him tightly in her arms and prayed to God to send her an angel to take care of her innocent baby boy.

God works in mysterious ways: sometimes in the form of an old white man named Reginald. He came out of nowhere and asked for her baby boy in exchange for a few hundred dollars. Truthfully, she would have given him up for free. Not because she didn’t love him - because she did, more than anything in the world - but because he wasn’t safe here. Reginald promised him a life of happiness and safety. And so Bianca gave him up under one condition: his name was Diego. She wanted him to know that. She wanted him to know that he was wanted, that he was treasured. The white man assured her he would be, and so off they went. She never saw her innocent baby boy again, but she prayed every night that he knew how loved he really was. And that one day, maybe someday soon, he would meet her and grant her forgiveness.

—

Years would pass and the pain would fade. But then she’d see a white Jeep Cherokee and she’d be right back in that place, watching her father get executed before her eyes. She’d smell the musty scent of gunpowder and she would tense up. She’d hear fireworks and she’d tremble in fear. She was safe here now, but the memories would never fade.


	4. My Prerogative (Number Three)

_Why can't I live my life (Live my life)_

[ _Without all of the things that people say (Oh Oh)_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ksc2Lb1VtsiZB6D7lwjOZ?si=NflBce9PQc6mx9gMZLMaZw)

**Name:** Candace Shawna Jackson

 **Date of birth:** 1973-08-05 (age 16)

 **Place of birth:** Los Angeles, California

Sharing a bed with her sisters was fine until her baby brother was born and he started sleeping there too. Four people fighting for space on a full sized bed was just one of the reasons Candace couldn’t wait to be out of this neighborhood. Don’t get her wrong, she was grateful for everything she’d be given. She got a scholarship to go to the fancy private school up in Brentwood and all signs pointed to her nabbing a scholarship to some place out east. But coming home to a ramshackle two-bedroom she shared with her grandmother, ma, three siblings and - most recently - her mom’s new boyfriend was a real bummer.

Candace would wake up early every morning to catch the 5 AM bus uptown. Any later and she would get caught up in the morning traffic, any earlier she would get caught up with the late night hustlers. Rappers made it big with songs about growing up in neighborhoods like Compton, but they always wrote those songs from a distance. Most of them wouldn’t be caught dead back here.

The so-called “War on Drugs” did a number on the neighborhood, almost as bad as the crack epidemic itself. Abandoned houses were drug dens and trap houses, and you have to watch out for people trolling the neighborhood looking to get into some trouble. But Candace stayed away from all that. She had goals. She was going to get into an Ivy League school, study hard, and become a doctor. Doctor, lawyer, or engineer. That was the path for her, and it certainly didn’t involve hanging on the block with the losers that went to her local high school.

You had to stay focused in a place like that. It’s easy to get thrown off. One wrong move and you’re toast - wrong place, wrong time. And it wasn’t always life or death, but it was sometimes the difference between ending up on CNN as an anchor or a news story. So when guys would spit game, Candace looked the other way. She kept her head down, tried to stay covered up to keep prying eyes away from her, and kept to herself.

She had seen enough girls her age mess around and end up dropping out of school to take care of their babies. Her mom was a cautionary tale. No boys, no parties, no fun - focus, focus, focus. You can have fun when you graduate, she told herself. So when she woke up one morning feeling an awful pain in her back, she wasn’t expecting it to be anything serious. She was a virgin and she didn’t use drugs. But the pain was so bad it made her want to vomit, and it was there in that little pale green bathroom in her ramshackle two-bedroom house that she gave birth to a little girl.

Mothers are supposed to look at their babies and fall in love. Or at least that’s what Candace was always told, that’s what you see in movies. When she looked at the baby all she could feel was fear and…disgust. Not at the baby, she was innocent and beautiful. But she wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t Candace’s life. She sacrificed having a normal teenage life, having fun to make sure that this didn’t become her life. She couldn’t do this.

Her mom was surprisingly not upset with her - what’s another mouth to feed in a house with too many people to begin with? She was planning on what name to give her, if they should name her after a character from a soap opera. All Candace could think about was how to get rid of her. She had heard that you could leave babies in front of fire stations - was that still a thing? She didn’t want to hurt her, she just wanted her to leave. She wanted her life to be back to normal.

So when she and her mother were approached by a white man that had no business being in a neighborhood like theirs, she saw it as a golden opportunity. He wanted to take the baby in exchange for a few thousand dollars. That would be a big deal for her to be able to apply to college, maybe avoid some loans, jumpstart her life. And she wouldn’t have to deal with the problem (read: baby) anymore! So she gave her up and tried to forget.

Her mother insisted that she made the wrong decision, but she ignored her. She was gonna get out of this town come hell or high water.


	5. 99 Luftballons (Number Four)

_Hab' 'n Luftballon gefunden (I’ve found a balloon)_

[ _Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen (I think about you and let it go)_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ppRabH8tpX7MSIQ3xjQvr?si=d0nUQCToTY-K7Osh0UZ4QQ)

**Name:** Steffi Christine Paeke

 **Date of birth:** 1968-06-01 (age 21)

 **Place of birth:** Bezirk Cottbus, East Germany

Steffi was used to not fitting in. Her mother was one of Germany’s so-called “brown babies,” the result of German women having affairs with African-American soldiers during World War II. The politically correct called them “brown babies,” but most called them mischlingskinder - _mutt children_. Her mother was a social pariah and so was she. Of course, her mother didn’t have any choice in the matter. Steffi, on the other hand, preferred to stand out as much as possible. Growing up in East Germany you were taught to toe the line. Women had a specific place in society and they were meant to stay in their place. That was never Steffi’s strong suit.

When she was young she was told repeatedly that she was overemotional and self-indulgent, so as a way to reinvent herself she became a rebel with a very particular cause. She was all about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll in a country that was explicitly against that way of life. She would listen to bootleg Western music, cut her skirts too short, do drugs with local burnouts in back alleys and underpasses. Anything to get a rush.

What did she learn from her escapades? Heroin wasn’t for her, too much of a downer. She was more of an uppers girl. She liked to party and feel like she was flying, not floating through time and space like she did using opium. She also learned that you can’t trust dealers, especially not in East Germany unless you want to get reported to the Stasi. Better to keep them at arms length and never give them your real name.

Her mother spent her life trying to fit in, so of course she wasn’t supportive of Steffi’s…bohemian lifestyle. She had given her daughter all of the advantages in life (read: a white father) and now she was throwing them away for no reason other than to watch the world burn. So when she got kicked out of her mother’s house at 17, Steffi did what she did best: she hustled. She soon learned that sex sells and it pays pretty well. It was good work if you could get it, and she was scrappy enough to best even the meanest of drunks in a pinch.

Everything was coming up Steffi for a long time. She got a lot of free passes in a country full of surveillance and overpolicing. But as with all things, her luck had to run out at some point. What she hadn’t bargained for was ending up in a sanitarium. Apparently a life of drug abuse and prostitution meant that she was mentally “unfit” for society, so to the padded room she went!

In the West they make mental hospitals seem so sterile. Not happy places by a mile, but they were nothing compared to the ones behind the iron curtain. Painful ice bathes and overzealous electroshock treatments, the whole nine. There were rooms that you never went into, but the people you heard inside were always screaming. It wasn’t exactly the East-Berlin Ritz-Carlton.

But Steffi being…Steffi decided to make the most of it. Her sense of humor and quick wit had gotten her out of trouble before, why would this be any different? And for the most part it worked. In the year that she had been institutionalized she had avoided the worst of the treatments, and although she was still considered “incompatible” with life in polite society, she was on her way to getting the hell out of there.

So when she woke up one morning to stomach pains and immediately gave birth to a baby boy, she was sure she had lost her mind for good. Maybe they were right, maybe she did need to be locked away for good. She picked up the child and looked it in the eyes, seeing herself in him. He was real and he was here - and he couldn’t be. She was a mental patient. Nurses - stunned by the circumstances - took the baby away and Steffi never saw him again.

She tried to forget about him, and for a while she had a pretty significant distraction in the form of her eventual release, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the reunification of Germany. But every morning when she would look at herself in the mirror, she saw him. And it gave her some measure of peace to know that when he looked at himself, he saw her too.

Even if he didn't know it.


	6. Zombie (Number Five)

_It's the same old theme_

_Since nineteen-sixteen_

_In your head, in your head_

[ _They're still fighting_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Bu5L0NQ4QxA5DQBN0lT0v?si=HVvQn1QYRrW03yOhFNpHLw)

**Name:** Aoife Clare O’Conner

 **Date of birth:** 1975-03-28 (age 14)

 **Place of birth:** Belfast, Republic of Ireland

Men are scum. Not her beloved late father, of course, but all other men were scum. At the tender age of 14, Aoife learned the hard way that men will take and take and take and give a woman zero credit after the fact. They blamed it on her age, that she was too young to take on a strategic position within the org, but she knew that was complete bullshit.

Her father Andrew O’Conner was a leader in the Irish Republican Army in the 60’s. He stayed a part of the org after it splintered out into the INLA, and remained a part of that org until he was killed by a loyalist. He died in the line of duty, a hero. Aoife was his pride and joy, it only made sense that she would take up the mantle after him. Of course, she was only a little girl then, raised within the ranks of the INLA. Her mother was from outside of the movement and had no interest in mothering. No matter, it was better this way.

Aoife was a born leader, a fighter from the day she was born. She nearly died at birth after her umbilical cord cut off her airway, but she fought through that and had fought anything that had gotten in her way since.

Even though she was only a young teenager she knew the direction the INLA needed to go in to be relevant in modern-day Ireland. If they wanted to continue to push for a unified Ireland, free from English rule, they needed to move differently. So for their most recent couple of…missions she was a key figure in the planning process. They would ask her opinion and she would give it, tell them what to do and not do. She was a young Seán Cronin in the making for Christ’s sake. But when it came time to celebrate their successes she was left in the dust, men taking credit for her hard work—her genius.

Men are scum.

Legally Aoife had to stay in school for a couple more years, but she was never one for formal schooling. She liked to learn the old fashioned way, by doing. She knew how to read and write, why did she need to learn geometry? When was she ever going to need to know how to calculate the circumference of a circle by hand? What was that going to do for her future as a leader in a unified Ireland? A bunch of bullshit, she was certain of that.

But the lads always told her to know her place, keep to the back, let the men do the dirty workwhile she hung back doing more administrative tasks. Truthfully they would rather she marry another recruit and keep a house for him, having children, going to mass every week, and keeping her mouth shut. Aoife was never one for listening to what an idiot dressed up as a leader said. So he had a fancy pair of boots, that didn’t make him the freaking Pope.

After one particularly intense argument with others in the group, she retired to her quarters where she suddenly felt a wave of nausea. She tried to go to sleep and let the feeling pass, but that was out of the question. When she awoke in the night, she felt an awful pain and suddenly nothing. Just a tiny cry breaking the silence of her bedroom. A baby? It made not a lick of sense to her. She wasn’t interested in boys, she was interested in liberation. But there he was.

Aoife knew the others would try and use this as an excuse to get rid of her - they had been gunning for her for years. Having a child wasn’t going to fly, not with her. So she wrapped the baby boy up in a blanket and walked him to a local cathedral. She heard that you could leave a baby on the steps of a church if you were in a bad way—girls in her town had done it before she was sure of it. So she left him there and knocked on the door four times. She waited hiding in a bush outside until she was sure that he was taken in—she wasn’t a monster and it was a cool autumn day after all. When she saw he was okay, she left under the cover of night.

She tossed out her clothes and sheets, cleaned herself up, and hoped that no one would be the wiser. And she was sure they weren’t until Father Torney approached her the following day about the baby that was left on their stairs the night before. He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone if she confessed her sin, so she did. And he told, because after all…men are scum.


	7. Don't You Forget About Me (Number Six)

_Love's strange so real in the dark_

[ _Think of the tender things that we were working on_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5lkQ6yIDVljNOdOuLLkBRK?si=N_el5V5URt2uy8HkScrmKg)

**Name:** Song Su-kyung

 **Date of birth:** 1971-09-09 (age 18)

 **Place of birth:** Pyongyang, North Korea

It was a good system in theory, but power corrupts. That was how Su-kyung saw the Kim regime. They believed in a system where no one was homeless, where everyone participated in a system that led to a better society, one that wasn’t governed by imperialist systems. It was good in theory. The problem with theories, though, is that they ignore the very human flaws that end up corrupting great ideas. Something that might have been a fine way of life at the beginning becomes a dictatorship before you know it, and once it has gotten that far it is hard to get out of it.

When Su-kyung was born, North Korea was experiencing a rapid wave of economic growth. They were in a good place, especially compared to their neighbors in the south, and her parents were optimistic. Life was good. That’s what she thought, until a few years went by and things got tougher. Foreign aid dried up and so did the resources and luxuries that came with it. Things rapidly began to feel more like the people of the DPRK were more prisoners than citizens.

To make matters worse, Su-kyung had to come to terms with the reality that her life wasn’t representative of everyone else in her home country. Her father had a good job under the current regime, her family a good reputation. When her best friend Un-jong’s father was accused of stealing from the rice fields, the entire family disappeared. When she asked her mother what happened, Su-kyung was told that the family had to be punished. They were sent away to a work camp in the countryside. When she asked when she would see Un-jong again, her mother just shook her head and told her not to worry about it.

They call it kin punishment or generational punishment. That’s what she heard whispered about. When she eavesdropped on her mother’s conversation she heard the phrase for the first time. You commit a crime serious enough and your entire family has to pay. Not only that, but the next two generations of family that you have will also be imprisoned to pay for your crimes.

So it was a good system in theory, but it was most certainly corrupted along the way.

Despite this disheartening knowledge, Su-kyung was a student leader and uplifted as an example of a model patriot for the country. When it came time to represent the country on the world stage, she was selected. The youth festival that summer was a great opportunity to show the values of North Korea, the tenets that it was based on. She socialized and networked, all under the watchful eye of her handlers. When she was done, her family was rewarded with more privileges. Generational treatment went both ways, apparently.

What the government didn’t know was that Su-kyung had goals, a long-term goal that she couldn’t even speak about in her prayers. She wanted to become a part of the system at a high level and reduce the corruption, create more freedoms for the people, and most of all to free people who were in penal colonies and work camps. It was playing the long game, but she was dedicated to the cause. Of course, she’d have to move quietly and be as undetectable as possible.

So when she gave birth one Saturday afternoon to a baby she wasn’t expecting, she knew that she couldn’t keep him. Su-kyung had a long game to play and a baby wasn’t a part of that plan. He was beautiful and innocent, too pure to be brought into her efforts. Even more importantly, she knew what would happen to him if she were to be found out. He would be punished and his children too.

Reginald Hargreeves was a strange man. She wasn’t sure how he got into the country, but he was offering to take her son and raise him up in a good home with loving siblings. It was more than she could ask for in her current circumstances, so she didn’t hesitate to take him up on it.

Su-kyung never regretted her decision. She needed to keep a level head if she was to help the people she cared so much about and any baby, no matter how cute, was a distraction she couldn’t afford.


	8. Never Is A Promise (Number 7)

_You say, "Don't fear your dreams, it's easier than it seems"_

_You say you'd never let me fall from hopes so high_

[ _But never is a promise and you can't afford to lie_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4HpXqTPcFdZbQra13D95j8?si=JMqzV8tzQ5qSOorQBXXpMw)

**Name:** Tatiana "Tanya" Valeryevna Kovaleva

 **Date of birth:** 1971-10-29 (age 17)

 **Place of birth:** Kazan, Russian SFSR, URS

Playing piano isn’t that difficult, Tatiana remembered telling her babushka. All you have to do is press the keys when they light up in your head. She didn’t realize then that synesthesia wasn’t something that happened for everyone, let alone in the unique way she experienced it. Her baba told her to never talk to anyone about it again for fear of them accusing her of witchcraft (to be fair, she was from a small village with rather provincial views).

Talent was something that was hard to place, but by the time Tanya was nine years old she knew that this was the key to her future. She could play piano better than anyone else in her community, even bringing grown men to tears. She didn’t need to read music, able to play a song she heard once perfectly within minutes. She was exceptional. She had dreams of going to Moscow or Leningrad to study under the best instructors. The Soviets had produced some of the best classical music in the world and she wanted to be a part of that history.

Unfortunately, when she asked her father if she could travel to Leningrad for a program, the idea was quickly rejected. She wasn’t going to be a pianist, he told her. That was a hobby. She needed to find a husband to take care of her. She needed to stop wasting time playing that damn thing and learn how to cook and sew like the other women in their family.

Her father crushing her spirit was something Tanya quickly got used to. In moments like these - or times her father would come home from the bar drunk and ready to fight - she would go to her bed, close her eyes, and dream about a life where her mother was still here. Her mama would always sing her to sleep, her voice silky and warm. If she was still here she would have supported her. She would have let her spread her wings and fly - even if it meant getting the hell out of Russia.

I’m extraordinary, I'm capable, she would repeat to herself in the mirror. Once her father caught her repeating the mantra and called her horribly vain. He took the mirror down.

She was always relegated to the background in that house, always taking the backseat to her brothers who were complete idiots. So they could chop more firewood than anyone else in town, that didn’t make them geniuses worthy of a medal.

She was never going to be able to reach her goals if she stayed there. So when she gave birth to a baby girl after swim class at school one day, she knew she couldn’t keep the baby. She was beautiful, all soft, smooth skin that reminded her of her late mother. But that baby would be an anchor tying her to this place for the rest of her life and that wasn’t her destiny. She was extraordinary. She was capable.

Tanya often thought of her baby girl - what did she become? Did she inherit her music ability? Or could she sing like her baba? These were thoughts that kept her up at night. But then she’d wake up and look out at the beautiful cityscape and know that it was for the best. If she had kept her baby girl she would have doomed her to the same kind of sad life her father wanted for her. And that wasn’t much of a life at all.

Still playing piano with an orchestra wasn’t difficult for her. Forgetting about what she gave up to get there, though…that was much harder.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this background fic! I'm getting to work on the story about them time traveling to visit their birth moms. I think there will be some interesting dynamics to explore, even amongst the other siblings and the various moms. Let me know if you have any suggestions or requests. :)


End file.
